Obama on the Debt Ceiling

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America%E2%80%99s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can%E2%80%99t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government%E2%80%99s reckless fiscal policies. %E2%80%A6 Increasing America%E2%80%99s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that %E2%80%9Cthe buck stops here.%E2%80%9D Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

I can''t believe no one has posted this already!\
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It''s shocking!\
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I think we should hold him accountable. Fuck the debt ceiling. Fuck it right up the ass.\
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Let it all burn.

You''re so cutting edge!

My goodness, I''ve only seen that quote fifty times in the past month. Thank goodness someone posted it the fifty-first time, so it can finally sink in! Bless you, OP; bless you. The scales have fallen from my eyes.

Wow, he supported the concessions "shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren."

Don''t we have the burden of our parents and grandparents? Why should the little bastards coming up have it any easier?

Of course, the flip side of that is the House Republicans depending a clean debt ceiling increase...

The "Gunwalker" scandal is going to drown him this year regardless of this debt ceiling issue.%0D\
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The Republicans will hold hearings after the first of the year and that will be the end of it. Drip, drip, drip.%0D\
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He needs to be gone.

[quote]He needs to be gone.%0D\
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And then you can have your GOP Congress, free and clear of any veto threat. Plus, all the GOP Supreme Court justices you''d ever want.%0D\
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What a triumph! %0D\
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Except that you''d like it even less than what you''re getting now.

Oh, oh what a feeling, I''m dancing on the debt ceiling!

Lionel Obama and the Commodores

Jeeezzz, I didn''t know that you guys had discussed this.\
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Been in Africa for the last 5 weeks, and didn''t have much access to Datalounge. Kinda shocked to come back and find that the budget debate was STILL going on.\
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I think it just shows the hypocrisy of BOTH parties!!!

OP

R7-\
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Not familiar with the Gunwalker thing- what happened?\
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McCain wouldn''t have been any better, since both parties are bought and paid for by the banks and big corporations.

OP

Hillary would have been better.

So you''re a fucking idiot, R10. Thanks for reminding us.

Why do you think I''m an idiot?

OP

The US government has WAAAAYYYY too much debt, and needs to have a balanced budget.\
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If you made 30K/year and spent 40K/year, knowing that in a few years your expenses were going to be 50K/year, while depending on people who don''t like you to loan you the extra cash, then cutting your expenses drastically is the only sane path. \
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Why is the government any different?!?!

R15 = a moron regurgitating shit he heard from some idiot republican.%0D\
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The government IS different, asshole. The government is not a business and it''s not a household. Those are fundamentally flawed comparisons.%0D\
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Only a simpleton thinks they''re the same.%0D\
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Everyone should read this... it''s pretty long, but it''s one of the few articles that is written from an adult''s point of view, discussing the facts, rather than a partisan point of view, playing politics or engaging in spin:

R16=moron regurgitating what he''s heard from democrats. \
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Unless you explain, in detail, how the government is different from a household when it comes to mounting debt, then you''re just a partisan fool.\
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BOTH parties have spent OUR money like drunken sailors, and now we are 12 TRILLION dollars in debt, with 50-100 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.\
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There are two ways to pay it- massive hyperinflation, which will destroy savings accounts and cause food, gas, and everything else to go up in price dramatically, or default on the debt. I choose the latter.

R15

Isn''t raising taxes on the "job maker class" an option r18?

[quote]Unless you explain, in detail, how the government is different from a household when it comes to mounting debt, then you're just a partisan fool.%0D
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You really are ignorant, aren't you?%0D
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Can households just print money? I didn't think so.%0D
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Look, EVEN IF you try to compare it to a business or a household (which is a completely false analogy), there are time when both must spend more than is coming in. For a business, they sometimes need to invest in advertising or expansion, borrowing money, in order to increase revenue in the future. For a household, if someone loses a job, do they instantly stop paying the mortgage and bills? No, they spend more than is incoming, even investing in a new interview suit and resumes in order to "stimulate" future revenues.%0D
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But all that is still not saying that government should be or is run like a business. Government isn't a FOR PROFIT venture, just for example. And as for a household, govenment is there to represent the people of this country, and serve as the enforcer of contracts, poviding for common benefits (roads, national defense, safety net), and thus provide us the framework within which we live our lives.%0D
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But the real reason that government isn't like a household is because macroeconimics isn't like economics. If you cannot grasp THAT, then further discussion would be difficult if not pointless.%0D
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But suffice it to say, government MUST run deficits when there's a recession, in order to stop a downward spiral or feed-back loop. During a recession, a government is the ONLY thing that CAN spend money. You have demand going down, so businesses contract and lay off workers, which pushes demand down again. Without government stepping in, the result would be a depression that would hurt (and even kill) a LOT of people. Government should run surpluses during boom times, paying off debt and saving for a rainy day, and use that savings for when things turn down again.%0D
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[quote]BOTH parties have spent OUR money like drunken sailors%0D
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No, ONE party -- the REPUBLICANS -- have driven up the debt. By 80% or so. They've pissed it away with massive tax give-aways to the wealthy (the largest transfer of wealth in history), on two unnecessary wars, on a huge new Medicare entitlement written by the Pharmecutical industry at great profit to them, and more. At least when DEMOCRATS spend money, it benfits this country. The stimulus was an INVESTMENT in our infrastructure and our people, saving millions of jobs. The only problem with it was that it wasn't big enough. %0D
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[quote]There are two ways to pay it- massive hyperinflation, which will destroy savings accounts and cause food, gas, and everything else to go up in price dramatically, or default on the debt. I choose the latter.%0D
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You're a completely ignorant moron.%0D
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Default will crash the economy, drive revenues even further down, evaporate most people's retirement savings, drive up interest rates, and make the debt that we carry FAR MORE EXPENSIVE. You couldn't choose a worse alternative if you tried. You would guarentee the destruction of this country with your idiotic and ignorant ideas.%0D
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Try this on instead: RAISE TAXES ON THE WEALTHY. They're paying the lowest rates EVER, and pay less as a percentage of their income than you, me, or most other Americans (including the very poor). Do that in concert with massive defense cuts (we've more than doubled the budget of the department of defense in the last 10 years, and that doesn't include Homeland Security spending), restructured Medicaid (it's the cost that will kill us in tehy future), and raising the income cap on SS/Medicare taxes... and we'd be out of this swap pretty quickly.%0D
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Put down the Ron Paul crack-pipe, and step away from FOX News, you moron. You're completely divorced from reality, and need to detox, stat.%0D

R20 is a real man. A sexy man with a huge dick and big, low hanging, swinging balls. He''s also brilliant and wonderful.

R20 is quite correct - the overwhelming majority of our national debt came from Republicans, not Democrats.
He's also quite correct that there is a huge difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics and that what is good for the latter isn't necessarily good for the former, that government spending should, in fact, be counter-cyclical, with spending increasing during the down times, running massive deficits, if that's what it takes, and paying down those deficits during the good times.
Until Reagan and Bush came along, it worked pretty well, but both Reagan and Bush decided they wanted to massively increase the debt during the good times, leading us to where we are today, with few good choices.
[quote]50-100 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.
Oh, garbage. That's a nonsensical, completely meaningless talking point, not even worth mentioning, much less considering in a serious policy discussion. Yes, we need to support Medicare and Social Security. Duh. But both of them can be, and have been, tweaked and adjusted in the past. Social Security can be fixed, permanently, with just a minor tweak or two (raise the income limit to which taxes are applied, raise the tax itself by a quarter percentage point, apply means testing, raise the retirement age by, say, six months, etc.).
As for Medicare, well, we don't have a Medicare problem; we have a health care problem, with costs spiraling out of control. Fix that and your Medicare problem goes away completely.
[quote]There are two ways to pay it- massive hyperinflation, which will destroy savings accounts and cause food, gas, and everything else to go up in price dramatically, or default on the debt. I choose the latter.
Also total garbage. It's trivially easy to balance the budget with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. Hell, just restoring taxes to their Clinton levels gets rid of half or more of the deficit, both short-term and long-term. We aren't anywhere near the time where we need to choose between two doomsday scenarios and it's foolish of you to pretend that we are.

i so wish we would

1. Everyone pays Social Security on all their earnings.\
2. Go back to the takes rates under Reagen.\
3. Bring back the inheritance tax on estates over 5, 10, 15 million, whatever (you pick a number).\
4. Initiate a 1% Federal Sales Tax to be used exclusively for debt reduction.\
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5. Get the hell out of the wars we''re in, pull the troops back to US Shores and agree to only ever send them overseas as part of a UN Peacekeeping mission with the understanding that we''ll send 1 soldier for every soldier the rest of the UN Countries send.\
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There, fixed. Let''s grab dinner and drinks, and then we''ll come back and close about a zillion tax loopholes just for kicks.\
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Tomorrow we''ll give everyone the option of signing up for Medicare.\
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This ain''t hard.

love r24.

Sounds good, R24, but number 4 needs a food exemption. Sales taxes are generally regressive and people out of work have a hard enough time feeding their families as it is.

I will vote for you, R24!

me too.

Three trillion has been the cost of the Bush wars. But the Reps won''t spin that story. Three trillion for lies thst achieved nothing. It''ll be all O''s fault. The other problem is that Dem govts arexinly being allowed to govern effectively for 12 months or less until their hands are tied by the Repubs using traditionak checks and balances mechanisms, which were never intended for party politics chess, to screw them over

Dancing on the debt ceiling!

Lionel Richie

Bump for hypocrisy.

Bump again for Libertarian idiots.

We breached the debt ceiling (again) last week, and are in "emergency spending mode".

Holy shit. I didn't see the date below the quote, and I thought: That's the leader I want!
(sigh)

R34
Doesn't it make you sick?
Obama is just another empty suit in service of the banksters.

Until we destroy the Federal Reserve and return to gold standard, allowing competing money (aka any money people will accept, allowing them at POS to convert it to whatever they want) and stop Federal spending...well, this is just the start.

Credit expansion is the governments foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate the capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
This first stage of the inflationary process may last for many years. While it lasts, the prices of many goods and services are not yet adjusted to the altered money relation. There are still people in the country who have not yet become aware of the fact that they are confronted with a price revolution which will finally result in a considerable rise of all prices, although the extent of this rise will not be the same in the various commodities and services. These people still believe that prices one day will drop. Waiting for this day, they restrict their purchases and concomitantly increase their cash holdings. As long as such ideas are still held by public opinion, it is not yet too late for the government to abandon its inflationary policy.
But then, finally, the masses wake up. They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap his money against 'real' goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time, within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants to give away anything against them.
It was this that happened with the Continental currency in America in 1781, with the French mandats territoriaux in 1796, and with the German mark in 1923. It will happen again whenever the same conditions appear. If a thing has to be used as a medium of exchange, public opinion must not believe that the quantity of this thing will increase beyond all bounds. Inflation is a policy that cannot last.